Tonight, with no prompting, Evelyn choose this book off her shelf and gave it to Pat to read to her:

This book, which came from our friend Sarah, was of course fitting for today: The day our family breathed a sigh of relief that President Obama has been re-elected and will remain in the White House for four more years.

This books is also pretty odd. I never noticed that about the Madeline books until reading them as an adult. This is by the grandson of the original Madeline author- so maybe it’s odder still because of that. The president’s daughter is a main character. Her name is Candle. Candle! There is also a magician (who is apparently in other ‘new’ Madeline books) – he takes the form of a rabbit and sends the girls on a magic carpet tour of Washington, DC.

I’ve started getting excited recently about the future family field trips we’ll take. I imagine a trip to D.C. full of monuments and museums and stories about these past two elections. She’ll ask us what it was like when every president was a white man, before gay people could get married, and when healthcare was a business. We’ll tell her about the waves of change, the faith in moving forward, the fights and the hope.

“I believe we can seize this future together because we are not as divided as our politics suggests. We’re not as cynical as the pundits believe. We are greater than the sum of our individual ambitions and we remain more than a collection of red states and blue states. We are, and forever will be, the United States of America.” – President Barack Obama’s victory speech